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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Rant: Getting the good stuff.

Psst. Alpha Trooper. It's what all the cool kids are doing.

Any Nerf online forum will have countless people 1) asking when a certain blaster will be released in their country, and 2) complaining that..a certain blaster has not been released in their country. Even those who live on Nerf ground zero in the US or HK still have this beef, let alone countries like Australia (and New Zealand apparently). It's pretty hard to live in Australia and get your hands on the latest release blasters; and I accept this. What I get more annoyed about though, is having to compete with my fellow Nerf fans for the old stock we DO have.

It's bad enough that we get the dregs of the world and are told to accept it; we have about 4-5 main blasters that occasionally are available in our toy stores, with their prices jacked up and the sales assistants who sell them having absolutely no idea if and when any of the new stock will arrive (actually most of them don't even know what it is they're selling). What's frustrating is of those 5 main blasters, most stores only carry up to 5-6 of them at a time if that. Which means.. the store will have stock for about.. oh.. 12 minutes before the die hard Nerf nerds come in and buy them all up. MULTIPLE amounts of the same blaster. Wondering why lil' Timmy is gonna get either a Nite Finder or a piece of crap Air Zone blaster for his birthday? Because some overweight or underweight Nerf nerd bought all of the Long Shots and Raiders and is at this moment ripping them apart to make them shoot over the length of a courtyard.

Ultimately, the stores don't care- they get in 5, they sell 5, who cares whether it's to 5 different people or goober Nerf nerd. But there's no "spread the good word of Nerf foam to the masses". Half the people I know don't even know what Nerf blasters are ( my boss remembered them as being a foam ball in the 80's.) The demand is short for Nerf because there's only about 10 guys in town who buy all the Nerf up; which is easy given Nerf only send about 30 blasters a year to our here shores!

And, I can't necessarily fault the Nerf nerds for doing this- good luck to them for showing up at Kmart at midnight (yes we have 24hr Kmarts, even in Australia!) and bringing their savings. I'm only mad because they beat me to it!

In the end, I'm through waiting for Nerf to come to me; I don't really care for when a certain blaster will be released in my home town, because to be honest, I'm not going to be able to get one. I don't have the ability to wait for a store to open and run in with my trolley and fellow Nerf loving mates because.. I have a job and most of my friends are putting their money into floor coverings and taps.

At the end of the day, it comes down to "how badly do you want it". I went into Target 2 days before the big massive toy sale, waited till they brought out their stock and bought a Rapidfire-20 for $39 bucks- 9 dollars MORE than the ticketed sale price that it would go for on sale day. Because I knew there wasn't a chance in hell that they'd still be there at 9:15am that day, so I'd rather pay 9 dollars extra and ensure I got one. Some would say I got "ripped off" and paid more than I needed to- but that's why I work- so I can afford 9 dollars extra to ensure I got one:)

I pretty much now order all of my stuff online through various different channels from the US and HK. Occasionally I'll find a decent grey importer domestically. But the stock in domestic retail stores is just too limited and too scarce these days for me to even bother. I'll accept Australia's got the gorgeous beaches and the pretty girls, and let my paypal account take care of the Nerf from overseas:)

A toy blaster resource; from a kidult's perspective living in an Australian inner city apartment. Focusing on out- of- the- box foam dart, laser tag and water guns with the odd two player co-op game thrown in for good measure:)